Wind driven electrical turbines are well known and one of their forms is known as a wind line, which is a series of wind driven rotors affixed along the length of a flexible power shaft with one end of the shaft in a rotatable bearing and the opposite end connected in driving relation to an electrical generator.
One form of wind line power system in the prior art is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,708,592 which employs a kind of wind screw formed of flexible fabric sheet which imparts rotation to a generator. Another prior art wind line power system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,165,468 in which wind driven rotors are affixed along the length of a flexible power shaft suspended at great height above the earth. Another is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,087,990 wherein a series of tetrahedral links form a chain which rotates in the wind by means of sails to transmit rotation to an electrical generator.
Each of these and other known prior art wind line power systems are quite complicated and comprise many hundreds of parts. It is the principal object of the present invention to provide a wind power system of the utmost simplicity and efficiency and to do so by employing as a drive shaft a series of end-to-end rods flexibly connected so as to transmit torque from one rod to the next and ultimately to the drive shaft of an electric generator, with simple windmill-type propellers affixed cross-wise to each of the rods. No such rods form the drive shaft of any of the known prior art designs nor do any of them include propellers extending laterally from anything like drive shaft rods.